Feverborn

by Karen Marie Moning

  She blinks at me like she’s having a hard time understanding English. She mouths the word “neuroplasticity.” “You know this how? Why?”

  “I drove a cab for a while. Coupla months.”

  “In London?”

  “Why the fuck do you think I’d tell you about a test I didn’t take?”

  “You took a test? And passed? You drove a cab?” She’s looking at me like I’m from outer space.

  “Do you know what the babes in London are like? How many wives fly in or out without their husbands from all kinds of international places? Look at me, honey. I’m a walking, talking, fucking Viking that loves to fuck. I had the run of the airport.”

  “Oh my God. You were a cabbie to get laid.”

  I wink at her. “Fun times.”

  “Okay,” she says, shaking her head briskly, “we’re done with clits and cabbies. What does this have to do with my problem? Are you saying I have to increase the size of part of my brain? How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Like the clit, the brain can change. The right posterior hippocampus registers spatial encoding—”

  “I’m having a real hard time with your sudden language proficiency,” she says, eyes narrowed.

  “Babe, I ain’t dumb. I’m efficient.”

  She leans back in her chair, looking at me with a slow smile tugging at her lips, and she’s trying not to let it happen but all the sudden she busts out laughing. “I’ll be damned,” she says when she finally stops laughing, and all the sudden I don’t like how she’s looking at me. Like she sees something I didn’t want her to see. Don’t ever want a babe to see. I’m suddenly wondering how smart this arrangement was.

  But in for a goddamn penny and all. So I start telling her about the theory of elaborate encoding, embellishing memories and inserting them spatially, tying them to a place, and suggest she use the abbey, because it’s so familiar to her. Some folks argue fictional places are superior, but when you already got a great big sprawling fortress you grew up in to use, why do more work than necessary? That’s pretty much the motto of my life.

  “So you’re saying I encode everything I want to remember into various images and tuck them into different places at the abbey in my mind? Sounds like a lot of work,” she says.

  “Yeah, but you only gotta do it once. And it gets easier when you get the hang of it. You gotta trick it up. Make it funny somehow. I remember this chick, I never knew her name and I wanted to file her and the woman was a serious-ass kink, so I called her Lola, you know, the Kinks—‘L-O-L-A low-la.’ ” I belt it just like Ray Davies, and fuck me they always did put on one helluva show. “I made her a bent paper clip resting in the fold of the sleeve on the Ray Davies statue in my study.”

  “Paper clip? You have a Ray Davies statue in your study? What else is in your study?”

  “Don’t be nosy, honey. It ain’t attractive. She was twisted. Like a bent paper clip. It worked for me.”

  She ponders it, worrying that hot lower lip of hers that has some serious suction power. “And this really works?” she says finally.

  “It’s all about taking control of your inner space, babe.”

  She stares at me a long moment in silence. She opens her mouth and closes it again, rubbing her forehead. Then, looking like she can’t even believe what’s coming out of her mouth, she says, “Can we just fuck?”

  I’m on her before she even finishes the sentence.

  I think I just gave a whole new spin to talking a chick into fucking.

  24

  “I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long…”

  “You want me to hunt the woman that looks like your sister?” Barrons said.

  I nodded. I was sick of not knowing what was really going on in so many areas in my life. It was bad enough that I had this thing inside me that, if it had rules, I didn’t know any of them, but now there was some creepy trash-heap Unseelie out there that had managed to freeze me in helpless horror, even though my sidhe-seer senses were currently neutralized, and another unknown entity masquerading as my dead sister.

  Two of those three things I could take decisive action about. Starting with the one that posed the greatest threat to my sanity.

  “I want you to capture her,” I clarified. “And I want you to bring her somewhere I can question her.”

  “You blew this off in Chester’s.”

  I sighed. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Ryodan. You know he chews a bone until it’s nothing but splinters. I didn’t feel like being his bone at the time.”

  “Do you believe it could be Alina?”

  “No. I think it’s completely impossible. But I want to know what the hell it actually is.”

  “You told me you buried your sister. You were certain it was her. Have you changed your mind?”

  “Nope. I buried her.” I don’t bother mentioning that I also recently exhumed her corpse and it wasn’t there. I saw no point in further complicating an already complicated issue. I wanted to examine the Alina-thing first, then I’d disclose all, if necessary, to Barrons.

  “I won’t be able to bring her to the bookstore,” he said.

  I nodded. He was going to have to change from man to beast to hunt Alina, and I didn’t think for a minute any Hunter would permit the creature Barrons became on its back and fly them over our private tornado. “Do you have another place nearby that’s well warded?”

  “The basement where you were Pri-ya is still protected.”

  Our eyes met and we had an intense nonverbal conversation, graphic reminders of sex, raw and aggressive, hungry and obsessive. You are my world, I’d said. Don’t leave me.

  You’re leaving me, Rainbow Girl, he’d said, and I’d known even then I was under his skin as deeply as he was under mine.

  “Is the Christmas tree still up?” I said lightly.

  I left it like it was. Best fucking cave I ever lived in, his dark eyes said.

  One day, we’ll do it again, I sent back. I wouldn’t have to fake being Pri-ya. Not with this man.

  He stretched and moved, began subtly changing.

  “Uh, Barrons, we have a meeting. I thought you’d go afterward.”

  “Ryodan canceled it,” he said around teeth much too large for his mouth. “He’s tattooing Dani. Jada.”

  “She’s letting him?” I said incredulously.

  “She asked.”

  I narrowed my eyes, mulling that over. “You were inking Ryodan. Same kind of tats you wear. I never saw those on him before.” And I’d seen him naked. “Is he giving her a phone? Will he be able to find her like you found me?”

  “Speaking of,” he growled, twisting sideways with a series of painful-sounding crunches, “you do still carry the cell, Ms. Lane.”

  “Always,” I assured him.

  “I’ll find this thing you seek, but when I return it’s imperative I finish my own tattoos.”

  “Oh, God,” I said slowly. “When you’re reborn all your tats are gone. Even the ones that bind us together.”

  “And until I replace them, IYD won’t work. That, Ms. Lane, is the only reason I wanted you to remain in Chester’s the other day. Until I finish them.”

  IYD—a contact in my cellphone that was short for If You’re Dying—was a number I could call that would guarantee Barrons would find me, no matter where I was. “I’m not completely helpless, you know,” I said irritably. Dependence on him makes me nuts. I want to be able to stand so completely on my own one day that I feel like I measure up to being with Jericho Barrons.

  “Head for the basement. I’ll see you there. This won’t take long.” He turned and dropped to all fours, loping off into the night, black on black, hungry and wild and free.

  One day I want to run with him. Feel what he feels. Know what it’s like in the skin where the man I’m obsessed with feels most completely at home.

  For now, however, I’m not running anywhere. I’m flying on the back of an icy Hunter to the house on the outskirts of Dublin where
I once spent months in bed with Jericho Barrons.

  —

  Dreams are funny things. I used to remember all of mine, wake up with the sticky residue of them clinging to my psyche, the slumbering experience so immediate and intense that if I was in my cold place, I’d wake up freezing. If I was hearing music, I’d come to singing beneath my breath. My dreams are often so vivid and real that when I first open my eyes I’m not always sure that I have awakened and wonder if “reality” isn’t really on the other side of my lids.

  I think dreaming is our subconscious way of sorting through our experiences, tying them into a cohesive narrative, and filing like with like in a metaphorical way—so in the waking we can function with a tidily organized past, present, and future we barely have to think about in the moment. I think PTSD occurs when something so shattering happens that it blows everything that’s stored neatly into complete chaos, disorganizing your narrative, leaving you drifting and lost where nothing makes sense, until you eventually find a place to store that horrible thing in a way you can make sense of. Like, someone trying to kill you, or discovering you’re not who you thought you were all your life.

  I have houses in my dreams, rooms filled with similar pieces of mental “furniture.” Some are crammed with acres of lamps, and when I dream I’m looking at them, I’m reliving each of the moments that illuminated my life in some way. My daddy, Jack Lane, is in there: a solid, towering pillar of a lamp made from a gilded Roman column with a sturdy base. My mom is in that room, too, a graceful wrought-iron affair with a silk shade, dispersing in her soft rays all the gentle words of wisdom she tried to instill in Alina and me.

  I have rooms with nothing but beds. Barrons is in those rooms pretty much everywhere. Dark, wild, sitting sometimes on the edge of a bed, head down, gazing up at me from beneath his eyebrows with that look that makes me want to evolve, or perhaps devolve into something just like him.

  I also have basements and subbasements in my dream houses wherein lurk many things I can’t see clearly. Sometimes those subterranean chambers are lit by a pallid gloom, other times corridors of endless darkness unfold before me and I hesitate, until my conscious mind inserts itself into the dream and I don my MacHalo and stride boldly forward.

  The Sinsar Dubh lives in my basements. I’ve begun to wonder endlessly about it, feeling like a dog with a thorn deep in my paw that I just can’t chew out. It manifests often when my subconscious plays.

  Tonight, waiting for Barrons to bring the Alina-thing to me, I stretched out and fell asleep on silk sheets in the ornate Sun King four-poster bed in which Barrons fucked me back to sanity.

  And I dreamed the Sinsar Dubh was open inside me.

  I was standing in front of it, muttering beneath my breath the words of a spell that I knew I shouldn’t use but couldn’t leave lying on the gleaming golden page because my heart hurt too damned much and I was tired of the pain.

  I awakened, drenched by an abject sense of horror and failure.

  I stood abruptly, scraping the residue from my psychic tongue. In my dream the words I’d muttered had been so clear, their purpose so plain, yet awake, I didn’t have one memory of the blasted spell.

  And I wondered as I had so many times in recent months if I could be tricked into opening the forbidden Book in a dream.

  Like I said—I don’t know the rules.

  I looked around, eyes wide, filling them with reality, not shadows of fears.

  The Christmas tree winked in the corner, green and pink and yellow and blue.

  The walls had been plastered—by Barrons months ago—with blow-up pictures of my parents, of Alina and me playing volleyball with friends on the beach back home. My driver’s license was taped to a lamp shade. The room held virtually every hue of pink fingernail polish ever made, and now I knew why I couldn’t find half the clothing I’d brought with me to Dublin. It was here, arranged in outfits. God, the lengths he’d gone to in order to reach me. There were half-burned peaches-and-cream candles—Alina’s favorite—strewn on every surface. Fashion and porn magazines littered the floor.

  Best cave indeed, I thought. The room, with the hastily plumbed shower I was certain he’d had to force my sex-obsessed ass into on frequent occasions, smelled like us.

  I frowned. What a terrible place to bring the facsimile of my sister. Surrounded by memories of who I was, who she was, how integral a part of my life she’d been.

  I cocked my head, listened intently with the last day of my Unseelie-flesh-heightened senses.

  Footsteps above, something being dragged, sounds of protest, heated yelling, no male answer. The beast was dragging the imposter of my sister to the stairs. I guessed she’d gotten the screaming out of her system. But then again, if it were a Fae masquerading as my sister, it wouldn’t have screamed. There would have been some kind of magic battle. I was interested to learn how and where he’d found it, if it had put up a fight.

  I pushed up from the bed and braced myself for the coming confrontation.

  —

  The screaming started in the basement, loud and anguished, beyond the closed door. “No! I won’t! You can’t make me! I don’t want it!” it shrieked.

  I kicked open the door, stood framed in the opening and glared at the imposter. It was near the bottom of the stairs, with Barrons blocking the stairwell, it was trying to clamber back up on its hands and knees.

  Was it going to pull the same stunt it had at 1247 LaRuhe? Pretend to be so terrified of me that I couldn’t possibly interrogate it?

  I stalked closer and it curled into a ball and began to sob, clutching its head.

  I moved closer still and it suddenly puked violently, whatever it had in its stomach spewing explosively on the wall.

  Barrons loped to the top of the stairs, shut and locked the door. I knew what he was doing. Transforming back into the man in private. He would never let anyone besides me see him morphing shapes. Especially not a Fae.

  I studied the sobbing form of my sister, filled with grief for what I’d lost and hate for the reminder, and love that wanted to go somewhere but knew better. Such a screwed-up mixture, so poisonous. It lay curled on the floor now, holding its head as if its skull might explode as violently as its stomach just had.

  I narrowed my eyes. Something about it was so familiar. Not its form. But something about the way it looked, laying there curled, clutching its skull as if it was—

  “What the hell?” I whispered.

  Surely it hadn’t studied me that closely! Surely it wasn’t playing such a deep psychological game.

  I began stepping backward, moving away, never taking my eyes off it. Five feet. Ten. Then twenty between us.

  The thing that was impersonating my sister slowly removed its hands from its head. Stopped retching. Began to breathe more evenly. Its sobs quieted.

  I strode briskly forward ten feet and it screamed again, high and piercing.

  I stood frozen a long moment. Then I backed away again.

  “You’re pretending you can sense the Book in me,” I finally said coldly. But of course. Alina—my dead sister, not this thing—had been a sidhe-seer and OOP detector like me. If my sister had stood near the Sinsar Dubh, like me, might it (me) have made her violently sick?

  I frowned. She and I had lived in the same household for two decades and she’d never sensed anything wrong with me then. She hadn’t puked every time I’d walked in the room. Was it possible the Sinsar Dubh inside me had needed to be acknowledged by me to gain power? That perhaps, before I’d come to Dublin, it had lay dormant within and quite possibly would have remained that way forever if I’d not awakened it by returning to a country I was forbidden to enter? Had Isla O’Connor known that the only way to keep my inner demon slumbering was to keep me off Irish soil? Or was there something more going on? Had there really never been any Fae in Ashford because it was so boring while we’d been growing up? Or had my birth mother somehow spelled our sidhe-seer senses shut, never to awaken unless we foolishly returned to
the land of our blood-magic?

  Oh yeah, feeling that matrixlike skewed sense of reality again.

  Why was I even speculating such nonsense? This thing was not my sister!

  It raised its head and peered at me with Alina’s tear-filled eyes. “Jr., I’m so sorry! I never meant for you to come here! I tried to keep you away! And it got you! Oh, God, it got you!” It dropped its head and began to cry again.

  “Fuck,” I said. It was all I could think of. After a long moment I said, “What are you? What’s your purpose?”

  It lifted its head and looked at me like I was crazy. “I’m Mac’s sister!”

  “My sister died. Try again.”

  It peered at me through the dimly lit basement, then, after a moment, got up on all fours and backed away, pressing itself against a crate of guns, drawing its knees up to its chest. “I didn’t die. Why aren’t you doing something bad to me? What game are you playing?” it demanded. “Is it because Mac won’t let you hurt me? She’s strong. You have no idea how strong she is. You’re never going to win!”

  “I’m not playing a game. You’re the one playing a game. What the hell is it?”

  It drew a deep shuddering breath and wiped a trickle of foamy spit from its chin. “I don’t understand,” it finally said. “I don’t understand anything that’s happening anymore. Where’s Darroc? What happened to all the people? Why is everything in Dublin so damaged? What’s going on?”

  “Ms. Lane,” a deep voice slid from the shadowy stairs. “It’s not Fae.”

  “It’s not?” I snapped. “Are you certain?”

  “Unequivocally.”

  “Then what the hell is it?” I snarled.

  Barrons stepped into the light at the bottom of the stairs, fully clothed, and I realized he must store caches of clothing all over the city, in case he needed to transform unexpectedly.

  He swept the Alina look-alike with a cold, penetrating gaze.

  Then he looked at me and said softly, “Human.”